Following a highly successful year in which the Things seminars explored objects and embodiment, during 2017-18 we further our investigation into the connection between material culture and the mind. We explore how objects affect cognition not just in virtue of their functional characteristics or their more obvious ties to human practices, but also through their ability to generate awe, curiosity, whimsy, and drama due to their construction and materials as well as their symbolic significance.

Imaginative Things examines of objects which may at first appear merely ornamental and fanciful, but which can in fact trigger forms of divergent and creative thinking, as well as a diverse range of emotions that lead to original insights. Things such as these influence cognitive processes via the action of visual and aesthetic stimuli, as well as through the way they engage physically with space and exert agency upon the body.

We renew our commitment to a nuanced interdisciplinary approach and the desire to bridge the gap between academic researchers with practitioners. Furthermore, this year we dedicate at least one session per term to a ‘workshop’ style seminar, where the discussion of a topic is followed by a ‘making session’. Our aim is to integrate academic investigation with a hands-on appreciation of materials and practices complementing a merely theoretical appreciation of creative processes. Our opening session on Wednesday 11th October constitutes a first example of this new exciting format. We will explore the practice and art of paper marbling with independent artist Hayrettin Kozanoglu and literary scholar Dr Mary Newbould. Future workshops include topics such as leatherwork and taxidermy. Turning the audience into active participants will provide a valuable opportunity to gain different perspectives on materials and practices, fostering a direct engagement which takes into account the emotional as well as intellectual responses objects trigger through sight, sound, touch, and smell.

Imaginative Things will be run in collaboration with Dr Marta Ajmar at the V&A Research Institute, consolidating a successful partnership which began during the last academic year. Together we will maintain the traditional configuration of Things in Cambridge, while holding one session in Lent and Easter terms at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This will grant us privileged access to a multitude of objects from the museum’s collection. Our discussions will be complemented and enriched through viewing as well as handling original artefacts. These sessions will thus provide the audience with an extensive, multifaceted, and multi-sensorial understanding of how studying the whimsical side of material culture opens the way to a deeper understanding of objects. Looking into the histories of materials, as well as our mental, emotional, and physical engagement with them, and the cognitive processes involved in creating, interacting, remembering will reveal the power of these Imaginative Things both today and in the past.

Susannah Brooke (Faculty of History) [2011-13]
Molly Dorkin (Department of History of Art) [2011-13]
Simon Layton (Faculty of History) [2011-13]
Eoin Phillips (Department of History and Philosophy of Science) [2011-13]
Hank Johnson (Department of History of Art)
Lucy Razzall (Faculty of English)
Jonathan Yarker (Department of History of Art) [2011-13]

Professor Maxine Berg (Department of History, University of Warwick)
Dr Richard Dunn (Curator of the History of Navigation, National Maritime Museum)
Dr Catherine Eagleton (Curator of Modern Money, British Museum)
Professor Ludmilla Jordanova (History, University of Durham)
Dr Larry Klein (Faculty of History)
Dr Kim Sloan (Francis Finlay Curator of the Enlightenment Galleries and Curator of British Watercolours and Drawings before 1880, British Museum)
Dr Chris Wingfield (Curator for Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

Previous Themes

We would like to propose an overarching theme of ‘embodiment’ in connection with material culture as a framing device for the Things seminars in 2016-17. The aim of this innovative approach, which is at the cutting-edge of current scholarship, is to further investigate human understanding of the world vis-à-vis objects. These seminars will examine a wide range of embodied practices, focusing on the historical and theoretical underpinnings of this larger theme.

The point of departure focuses on the significance of embodiment in all processes of cognition and learning, moving beyond an obstructive divide between 'mind' and ‘hand' - between ‘intellectual’ and ‘manual’ knowledge. In particular, we will probe the interaction of objects in relationship to the body and explore issues regarding sensorial experiences. This new approach will allow us to probe the connection between humans and objects in the wider understanding of culture. Discussions will focus on diverse topics including the making of objects and the skills required, artisanal epistemology, and the languages of embodied knowledge from 1400-1900.

We seek to break down the divide between the Humanities and Sciences, and this theme will bring together speakers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds within academia and beyond, such as museum curators, conservators, artists, performers, medical experts and scientists. The seminars will engage with topics from Art History, Musicology, History, Archaeology, Anthropology, History and Philosophy of Science, Medicine, Psychology, and Biology amongst others, in order to foster discussion and the development of ideas within and between each discipline; for instance, we have invited Victoria Bartels to speak about the embodiment of the use of armour in the Renaissance, for a site visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

In 2016-17, we intend to collaborate with Marta Ajmar (Victoria & Albert Museum Research Institute) who will be a visiting scholar in Cambridge, and Roger Kneebone (Imperial College) to convene the seminars. Together, we will keep the traditional Things format with a two-speaker minimum, but alternate each ‘conventional’ seminar with a new style of sessions, including on-site visits, performance-based seminars, and roundtable-style presentations and discussions. The traditional format will continue monthly, with the new sessions complementing them on alternate weeks.

Building on the success of the traditional Things discussion-based seminar, next year’s sessions will also include more site visits and performative aspects to increase audience engagement. Visits may include the Fitzwilliam Museum to see manuscripts in the Founder’s Library in conjunction with a presentation on-site by speakers to explore historical human interaction with manuscripts. Other site visits could include an object session at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to view fan capes. To incorporate a performative aspect, some sessions would include speakers demonstrating the embodied practices discussed in their presentations. For instance, we will invite Victoria Bartels (University of Cambridge) on Renaissance armour, Professor James Daybell (Plymouth University) on gloves, and Professor John Rink (University of Cambridge) on musical performance. These demonstrations combined with comparative papers will provide the audience with a comprehensive examination of how studying material culture through the lens of embodiment facilitates a deeper understanding of objects and their use, and of humanity’s historical interactions with ‘things’.

2015-16 Things - (Re)constructing the Material World

'Things' is now a firmly established part of CRASSH and the interdisciplinary community of Cambridge, having been founded in 2011. In 2015-16, we are focusing on the theme of construction and reconstruction in response to an exciting turn in material culture studies, where scholars have been thinking more about production and collaborating with craftspeople and museum professionals to develop a deeper understanding how objects were made, as well as used and consumed. We want to stretch the definition of 'reconstruction' even further, to explore how scholars are bridging gaps in the archive, crossing disciplinary borders, and collaborating with practitioners outside of academia in order to 'reconstruct' ideas, spaces, and 'things' from the past.

Many of our speakers will be exploring how objects were made and crafted and how knowledge of construction can help us to understand more about how things were used and valued in the early modern world. Some of these speakers will be reconstructing these processes step-by-step in laboratories, workshops, and performance spaces, and we look forward to learning from their practical expertise and experiments.

Conservators and curators have a different approach to 'reconstruction,' and we hope to hear more about how they repair damaged objects and imaginatively bring their collections to life through artistic collaboration and interpretative installations.

Some of our speakers will be performing less literal kinds of 'reconstruction'. We are looking forward to learning how scholars have filled in gaps in their archival sources in innovative ways - employing interdisciplinary methodologies, new approaches to biography and historical fiction, the history of emotions, literary reading, visual analysis, and thinking with 'things' to reconstruct the material world.

While our speakers come from a diverse range of backgrounds - as makers, academics, and museum professionals - they all share a deep interest in objects and place 'things' at the heart of their work.

2014-15 Things that Matter

In the 2014-2015 academic year, we are pushing the already popular series in new and innovative directions. Considering the “material turn” in scholarship, this year’s series will emphasise the importance of materiality in object study, and we have thus entitled the next year’s seminar: Things that Matter, 1400-1900. This play-on-words emphasizes the need to focus scholarship on the material composition of an object in addition to the object’s relevance, appearance, and use. A deeper awareness of the matter will allow speakers to emphasize how the economic, cultural, and physical attributes of certain materials and their meanings contributed to understanding the value and connotations of objects in their original contexts.

2013-14 Things: Comparing Material Cultures 1500-1900

With the dawning of modernity came the age of ‘stuff.’ Public production, collection, display and consumption of objects grew in influence, popularity, and scale. The form, function, and use of objects, ranging from scientific and musical instruments to weaponry and furnishings were influenced by distinct and changing features of the period. Knowledge was not divided into strict disciplines. In fact, practice across what we now see as academic boundaries was essential to material creation. This seminar series uses an approach based on objects to encourage us to consider the unity of ideas of this period, to emphasise the lived human experience of technology and art, and the global dimension of material culture. It does this by inviting pairs of speakers, often from different institutional backgrounds, to speak to a particular kind of ‘thing’ or a theme that unites disparate ‘things’. Previous ‘Things’ seminars have concentrated on the early modern period generally and the long eighteenth century in particular; this year we have taken the step into the nineteenth century, the era that brought us the mass production of ‘things’. Our aim continues to be to look at the interdisciplinary thinking through which material culture was conceived, and to consider the question of what a 'thing' is, with the ultimate goal of gaining new perspectives on the period 1500-1900 through its artefacts.